Why? Why Veganism?

Well that is a very good question, I am happy you asked. There are a lot of reasons! Let me share them with you.

1. I am not a big meat eater by nature. My body prefers a vegan diet. I don't know why. I love cheese. I mean, I LOVE the taste of cheese. If cheese were a man, I would marry him...well, at least up until recently that is. My skin looks better, my joints feel better, my hair grows faster all when I avoid animal products.
2. I have a neurological condition that I believe to be hormonally aggravated. There are tons of hormones in animal products since the factory farming industry pumps the animals full of hormones (and other things like anti-biotics) and guess what? We ingest that crap! I don't want to ingest that crap. We get enough of that from our beauty products, cleaning supplies and plastics. 
3. The factory farming industry is BAD. I do not mean to be cute and flippant here, but in addition to not following the rules with how they kill the animals, this industry violates human rights too! It is responsible for injuries, child labor, disease and many safety concerns. Also, there are a crap ton of things they do to the meat (read about Burger King in the news recently? Yeah, they were mixing horse meat into the "beef" and not telling the consumer). Do you know if there is a beef contamination, they can pull the beef off the shelves and NEVER notify the public that there has been a recall? Did you know the American Beef Association ran experiments on starving African children to "prove" meat was healthy? Yeah, that is the tip of the iceberg and we will go into all this in painfully excruciating detail at a later date. 
4. The animals SUFFER. It is terrible. I will spare you the details. There are a lot of books out there that go into detail. Read them.  "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."
   Paul McCartney
5.  There are a lot of lies floating about out there. Lies by "respectable" organizations like the FDA and the USDA. Organizations that are supposed to protect us and watch out for our best interests. They don't.
6. Factory farming is destroying the earth. Poo. Farts. and Burps. Yeah it sounds funny. No, it isn't funny at all. It is destroying the air, the water and the land.

So when I was in high school, I read a lot of books. I don't remember most of them, but I do remember seeing images of chickens being tortured. That was horrible. I guess eventually, I just blocked it out, became disconnected from my food like so many people out there. America, we are the most overfed and undernourished country in the world. We are so disconnected from what we eat it isn't even funny.

I was disconnected. I literally blocked out mentally what I was eating. I removed myself from my nutrition and my food. (and not just meat here, everything)

I made a decision to start watching nutritional documentaries. It was a Sunday, I was bored. I watched 7 that day. One was a documentary called "Vegucated". It sucked me in. It was cute and campy and funny. It was about three people who went vegan for 6 weeks. Then about half way through, (I was already invested) it put the meat whammy on me. It was terrible. Disturbing. Horrible. Watch it!